Music: Jukebox

Our music blogger Verity Vincent takes us down music memory lane with a selection of her favourite albums and song… and we want to hear about yours. Drop us a line with your music and memories to music@thingsandink.com

Now and then we all dig out old music and rediscover albums that conjure up all kinds of memories. Whether we go back decades or just a few months, music will never be disposable – despite the ever-changing face of the industry.

An album I often land on while scrolling through iTunes, is La Roux’s 2014 Trouble in Paradise. This is one of those albums to perk you up on a dreary journey to work. The ’80s disco feel jolts you to a cocktail holding, tropical sun-beaming place. And I like it.

The initial track Uptight Downtown is relatable to everyone who has been in one of “those” clubs. The clubs where the cool kids stand around subtly nodding their heads and casting judgement on all they see and hear. Kiss and Not Tell and Sexoteque offer the current generation an “It’s OK, we’ve all been there” vibe, with themes of love, sex and relationships.

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For something a little heavier, I often make a return to Exit Ten. Their albums Remember the Day and Give Me Infinity are full of rock and metal enthused anthems which never really got the full notability they deserved. Give Me Infinity’s closer ‘Lion’ is a huge track and singer Ryan Redman’s vocals are just outstanding. Incidentally, he’s currently been playing with I AM GIANT, but maybe one day an Exit Ten reunion will be on the cards?

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2015 was a great year for music and one of my top album picks is Leon Bridges – Coming Home.The title track blew up over the summer and songs like ‘Better Man’ and ‘Pull Away’ give the album such authenticity for this style of music. Peaking at number 8 in the UK and number 6 on the US Billboard chart, it was a great feat for a soulful, gospel album. It could sit up there with Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, easily.

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There is also a staple record in my vinyl collection that never tires. The American Graffiti soundtrack. It’s like having a crash course in ’50s classics, some more well-known than others, but with tracks from Del Shannon, The Crests, The Beach Boys and Fats Domino, to name a few, it’s a timeless album that will resonate whether you’ve seen the film or not.

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Home Ink

Our Italian contributor Ilaria Pauletti tells us about the Home Ink tattoo party held at Home rock bar a night full of tattoos, burlesque and prizes… 

In December after I long day at work I found myself browsing Instagram and I came across a tattoo competition connected to Home Ink 2015, an event I really wanted to go to. It was being promoted by Home Festival, a music festival that I  love a lot and that is always held in my home town.
So I said to myself, why not? Let’s do it!

To enter the competition all you had to do was share one of your favourite tattoos on Instagram, tagging the organiser in the picture and then getting as many likes as you could. It was very simple, so I decided to share my bunny tattoo (by Amy Savage) and a few days later, they told me  that I won the Instagram contest!

My Rabbit by Amy Savage

The tattoo party was located at Home Rock Bar (Treviso), a great bar with good music and a fresh atmosphere.
The main theme was tattoo and their motto ‘Stay Inked, Stay Home!’ was plastered around the place, I loved the decor.

Home Rock Bar

The judges were Tizio from Klinik Studio, Amedeo Lombardi who organises the Home Festival events, a member of Tattoo Defender team, a tattoo artist and a tattoo lover chosen from the crowd.

Each participant (from the public) was given an identification number and allocated a category based on the size of your tattoo. During the evening you were called by the presenters to parade and show off your ink. As you were showing the judges your tattoo you weren’t allowed to mention who it was done by, as this may have influenced their decision.

Prizes

While the judges voted in secret the crowd was entertained by a burlesque show by Genny Mirtillo, she is such a lovely girl and I loved her fire eating abilities!
The show ended and the judges announced the winners. Once you were entered into the winners rank, you were called to appear again on stage, and collect the prize won. When it came my turn, I was a bit nervous. But it was also pretty exciting!

Genny Mirtillo

I won a special limited edition pack where I got free entrance to the four day Home Festival events, some cute Sun68 gadgets I will receive this September, a personalised plate with the date and logo of the event and a little bag containing fir seeds to make the world a more sustainable place! Such a cute pack of goodies, right?

Home Festival is without any doubt the best music festival in Italy, you just need to take a look at last year’s line up. So I’m very happy to have joined this Instagram competition, and I can’t wait to find out who is going to play this September!

Music Review: The Vaccines

Our guest music blogger Verity Vincent stopped by Plymouth’s Pavillions earlier this month to check out The Vaccines. For those that haven’t seen The Vaccines perform live before we recommend you put it on your to do list for 2016.

Justin Hayward Young, Freddie Cowan, Árni Árnason and Pete Robertson took to the stage at Plymouth’s Pavillions and treated the crowd to 90 minutes of pure musical indie-rock goodness. The nice thing about watching The Vaccines is their ability to create a musical arc of their material, giving fans exactly what they want. Playing songs from their first two records, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? and Coming of Age, as well as their latest offering, English Graffiti.

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The initial mild mood of the crowd quickly changed when the boys kicked off their set with ‘Handsome’, ‘Teenage Icon’ and ‘Ghost Town’. If we were talking in sandwich terms, the filling of the gig was a meaty concoction of hit after hit including ’20/20′, ‘I Always Knew’ and staple track, ‘If You Wanna’. Cue the flying beer cups, bodies being launched onto shoulders and the Pavillions, in general, coming alive. Justin’s vocals seemed to just effortlessly float out and fill the venue while he controlled the stage with honest, natural charisma. He has a way of not giving too much away with idle chit chat, but still connecting with the crowd.

A mid-set highlight was ‘Post Break-Up Sex’ which had every sweaty body in the building singing along to the lyrics that, if we’re honest, everyone can relate to.

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@thevaccines

Bring the set to an end with the outstanding anthem ‘All in White’, Justin then returned to the stage solo and softly launched into an acoustic version of ‘No Hope’ with the entire room hanging on his delicate notes.

Before fully closing off, Justin divulged that they’d actually forgotten, until now, to offer up a track choice to the crowd. It mattered not – the choice was unanimous and the band went out with a bang, with ‘Blow It Up’. Palma Violets front man Sam Fryer burst back onto the stage and darted around in quite possibly the most enthusiastic duet you could witness. High energy would be an understatement and it brought the night to a perfect end.

Music Review: Strange Wilds

Our guest blogger is hobbyist reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward

Strange Wilds, Subjective Concepts , 2015, Sub Pop Records 

A grungy punk trio from Olympia, Washington State signed to Sub Pop records. No we have not gone back in time to 1989. I am reviewing a debut album released this year in July by a band named Strange Wilds, who sound like they’ve teleported straight from the late 80s/early 90s Seattle grunge scene to assault our ears. Their state and record label has been home to Nirvana and other indie rock legends, whose anguished noisy spirit they tap into with joyous enthusiasm.

Strange Wilds Band Photo
Strange Wilds Band Photo

 

Now surely a band coming out and replicating a sound popular over a decade ago is a sign to be worried about the progression of music. Then again, there aren’t many places left for music to progress to. There are still lots of good bands coming out, but there’s no big unifying rock movement pushing the genre forward. There are lots of scattered bands who mostly try to sound like great bands from the past who already broke down some musical barriers. A few bands who have cropped up in NME , like Wolf Alice for example, sound and dress like a 90s grunge band. As nice as it is to see people still inspired by this great time in music, the fuzzy-angst-in-converse-and-scruffy-sweaters formula has been done a lot and some current bands (like, in my opinion, Wolf Alice) sound like bland reproductions.

Strange Wilds are the first grunge throwback I’ve heard that I enjoyed. This is because they choose not to channel the brooding stadium-ready gloom popularised by mainstream grunge acts like Pearl Jam  and Soundgarden, which countless post-grunge fakers have wallowed in (Nickelback being the chief culprit). The album Subjective Conceptions harks back to the glory days of grunge’s punk/hardcore roots, sounding like a lost Mudhoney  or Black Flag record. Each song snarls and drips with twisted scorn while thundering along with gnarly riffs not out of place on Nirvana’s first album or a Melvins record.

While there’s nothing strikingly original here, it is nice to listen to a band who like making noise for the hell of it and having a good time. Most current indie bands are either light and fluffy, or take themselves too seriously. Take Metz  for example, Strange Wilds’ fellow contemporaries of noise also signed to Sub Pop, who have released their second album this year. The bleak and terrifying din from Metz is impressive, but noise is all you get with some barely distinct lyrics hollered over the top.

Strange Wilds Band Photo
Strange Wilds Band Photo

 

Listening to Subjective Concepts however, I found myself (shock horror) singing along, something I haven’t done with any recent bands for a while, especially since most bands insist on distorting the vocals beyond recognition. Strange Wilds singer Steven’s vocals are left free and clear to bitterly mutter the verses and howl the choruses in true grunge fashion. The twisted lyrics aren’t bad either, if a bit infantile (‘the streets are littered with our filth’ etc) but the whole band yells them with such gleeful abandon they’re infectious. The band have mastered the art of the catchy grungy chorus, with some spikes of smart sarcasm throughout.

Nowhere is this more effective than on the album’s most powerful track: the opener and single ‘Pronoia’. This is the one song that comes close to being a sincere anthem despairing of the human condition, roaring along with full throttle punk energy. The video is cool as well, showing off the band’s imagination. Standard shots of the blond, long-haired singer thrashing around on his guitar (remind you of anyone?) are interspersed with queasy shots of food and other unidentifiable squishy objects being smashed.

If you still buy CDs, the album’s artwork is cool too. I love record covers that don’t match the content. On the Subjective Concepts cover, we have a young woman dancing on the edge of a building over some urban landscape at sunrise. That and the delicate album title suggest you’re in for some soft ambient music about the self-destructive desire for freedom from social constraints or something. I hope someone picks this up and is pleasantly surprised by the loud, squalling bitterness within. This is a band I’ve been waiting for since headbanging to Nirvana as a teen. This is a short but unforgettable blast of glorious rage that borrows heavily from the past but still sounds fresh, fun and rocks like a boss.

Music Interview: Creeper

In the perfect prelude to Halloween, our guest music blogger Verity Vincent went to Exeter’s Cavern club for it’s aptly named line up of Dead Frequency, Skeleton Frames and Creeper for a night infused with trick or treat sweets and even warm pasties on the bar. Yes, we were in Devon. 

Before the gig we caught up with lead vocalist Will Gould and bassist Sean Scott from to have a chat about all things Creeper.

Tell us about this tour, how’s it been going?

Will: It’s been great, it’s the last night of the tour and it’s been quite a long one for us. Tonight’s a headline show but the rest of the shows have been with Frank Carter and The Rattle Snakes. We weren’t planning to go on tour again this year as our last one with Moose Blood was going to finish the year but Frank messaged us and asked us to come out, so you can’t really say no to that!

But it’s been good and we’ve learnt a lot on this tour.  This year is all about us getting out there and playing and having as many amazing experiences as we can and I feel like with this tour everything that could happen – has happened. The Frank shows have been rowdy as hell. Frank is the nicest guy in the world, really softly spoken but when he’s on stage he’s mad as hell and the crowd are the same. Playing to them is not always what they’re expecting as we’re perhaps a bit more flamboyant! Black Coal were on the tour too so we got to know them really well.

We were opening up for the first time since January so we had to re-work the set to fit the crowd. We only got 30 minutes and we were used to doing a little bit more than that and doing a bit more of a closer. We’re a lot more theatrical than some of the other bands we play with and you can’t really do all that in an opening slot on a 3 band bill but it’s been really good, it’s really challenged us. I feel like we’ve come out the other side of it with not only a respect for Frank and his crowd but it’s made us give ourselves a bit more callus, and toughened us up a bit, it’s been really good. 

So doing headline shows for you guys isn’t as much more pressure, but more freedom?

Will: We’re not a warm up act for anybody, if someone’s coming to a show they kinda know what they’re gonna see and we’ll do it all. Like tonight, we’re doing one of our closing songs and all the fun stuff in between but it seems a bit pretentious doing a big dramatic closing song when we’re opening a show, it didn’t feel like the right thing to do.

Sean: There’s expectations of what people know you’re meant to be doing in terms of your own set, there is that respect to those people who come to shows all the time that they want to see that. If we’re playing to a completely new crowd, you can expect people to stand around, maybe not liking it, their ideas are going to be different to the average person so you’ve got to maybe play into them a little bit more than you would do normally.

Will: And it’s not that we would ever change what we do to suit someone else, it just doesn’t always seem like the right thing to do. There’s one song we’ve been playing with a piano theme and it sounds like it could be from a musical, so if we ended a set on that when we were an opening band it just seems almost disrespectful for the bands that are playing after. It’s difficult going back to being an opening band and working out how we do that now with our new material but it’s been really fun to do it. I think half the point about doing that tour was to go out and challenge ourselves.

 

Did you find it similar when you toured with Misfits? 

Will: It’s a very similar sort of thing but it’s something we couldn’t say no to again. We got the opportunity to do it and to be honest on the Misfits tour everybody there was wearing full makeup and a leather jacket and I was like – this is our crowd. So we did end with some of those big songs that we could get away with more on those particular shows. It didn’t seem as out of place for some reason. But that was really fun as well but a very similar sort of vibe you know, we’re proving ourselves and we’re cutting our teeth and it’s all about the experience for us.

You’re playing with Skeleton Frames and Dead Frequency tonight, have you heard much of them before or played with either of them? 

Will: Yeah, our agent sends a list of suggestions basically of everyone available and we check them out and this is our first time playing with them but I’m always excited. One of the best things about being in a band, and one of the first reasons you get in a band is to find new music and check out new stuff and it always really interests me what’s going on in a city. I might end up bumping into everybody again, you never know. So when we do get to do headline shows, I think we’re quite privileged to do it anyway, but even more so to have other bands play with you we try to take as much interest in that as we can, so I’m really excited to see everybody today. See what Exeter’s got going on.

Is it interesting to see how the music scene differs from city to city?

Will: It really does! Some places have a really strong hardcore punk scene and sometimes there’s no punk scene at all. But because you come through they’re so grateful that a punk band have come there and they’ll come out to the show because there’s not a lot of it in the area. So yeah it’s really cool to see how it differs place to place.

Sean: We’ve been here twice this year with Bury Tomorrow and Bayside and the demographic for those crowds is so far apart in a way so it’s kind of like each time we’ve come we’ve had a different scope of the audience. We’ve had the heavier crowd, we’ve had the sort of nostalgic Bayside crowd and now we’ve got what could be more ours and catered to with those who are playing with us.

You released your Callous Heart EP on vinyl which sold out on your website, why do think that format has had such a surge in popularity again? 

Will: When I was a kid and my parents divorced I remember my dad giving me a load of records so my first impression of owning music was holding something really tangible. So when I got more into music myself I bought CD’s and the whole thing was about going into town on a Saturday and flicking through CD’s and finding something new.

I think a big part of what we do is visual and our visuals are really important to us so we spend a lot of time working on those. Our band in particular translates very well to vinyl. It’s a large platform for our fans to interpret our band in an artistic sense in terms of something physical – something you can hold. But in terms of the medium itself, when mp3’s were happening and everyone was terrified that Napster was going to kill the internet, I think that was maybe ill-founded because people that care about music were always going to want to have something to hold.

When I’m at home and I look through my record collection, I’ll see something that I want to listen to and I might just put it on my phone straight away – but I’ve seen it and had a visual stimulus to do that. Imagery and visuals can define a band as well,  when you see a logo or a tiny little nuance – or when people do a colour variant it’s such a bit deal to people because people like to hold it and it’s about ownership. I remember my dad had a Pink Floyd gatefold record and opening that up, it was already like going into another world, having something to explore in itself and read all the notes. When I was a kid it was about finding out what bands were thanked on the record to then pick up bands that inspired the bands I like. So I think that stuff absolutely has a place and it was always going to come back round again. It’s why people are selling tapes now. You can laugh at it and say its retro or just a fad but I really don’t think that records will be. CD’s have gone now because you can have an audio download in great quality and play it right then and there and have the record for something to collect at the same time – that’s why most records come with download codes.

Sean: I think a lot of people don’t see a value in a CD for the money that it’s priced at, but with vinyl you get a bigger thing to hold or even with 7 inches, there’s more artwork, it looks like more time and thought has gone into it than the average person will see in a CD. On a wider scope, majority of people will see music as a service not a product. The may not think a lot of time has gone into the artwork or a CD booklet, whereas when you see a big vinyl that actually looks, like Will said, like art, you can frame them and have them on your wall, and have the download there as well.

Will: I think there’s something really romantic about it as well; going to a gig and picking up records and taking them home. It’s literally picking up piece of that music and taking it home with you, I think that’s something that will never die. Taking a record over to your friend’s house in a tote bag – that’s timeless.

There’s something about the sound as well isn’t there, it’s almost more tangible?

Will: Absolutely, it reminds me of being a kid because of my parents but I think that’s what I like about it, it my head the bands that I’m into, would have some relevance to my dad. Sending one of my records to my dad and him going “Oh! You’re in a band!” because he recognises that as music and something he would’ve got when he was a kid and I think that’s really cool. And the sound quality, absolutely.

Sean: It aids an artist as well, someone I always buy on record is Lana Del Ray, although she’s seen to be in a very contemporary music world, her sound is slightly of an older generation, it’s a very 50’s / 60’s influence. So if you’ve got that added thing of a crack or a slide of the needle going through a groove, you can’t get that with an MP3 pristine link.

Will: It’s almost ritualistic; you have to invest that time into it. Music can start to seem disposable to people. I remember Dave Hause once said he didn’t want to be on a record that was locked in someone’s hard drive and forgotten about forever, lost in time.

Knowing that someone would take the time to buy your record, unwrap it, put the needle across – that may not seem like a lot but we live in a world where people will click and play something for 5 seconds and then cross it off on Facebook. For someone to invest that time in 2015 when there is not time for anything, that’s really special.

You’ve been touring a lot! When it comes to recording do you take time out for that or try and juggle it on the road?

Will: In terms of records, we tend to keep what we’re doing very quiet and on the down low on purpose. As a band we like to make something and then present it when it’s done. Some bands I know like to record diaries but it’s not really our thing at all. Behind the scenes is something that only half interests me. I don’t like the idea of someone being in the studio with a camera or constantly doing updates like “recording drums today”.  With our band the appeal is to escape for a minute, to see something different, to find something in it that makes them think of another time or place. They want that nostalgia, that performance. What good does it do to walk round the back of Disneyland, who wants to do that? And that’s exactly how I feel about it. I’m not comparing our records to Disneyland! But in a way I think that we set the stage, we play in character and with the conviction that those songs need. The process of it may seem quite boring of it, quite mundane.

This time, we were recording in the day and doing festivals in the evenings. We didn’t want to slow down and take away from touring, but at the same time, we needed to record.

What’s next year looking like for you? More of the same?

Will: We’re going out on tour with our friends Neck Deep in the UK and round Europe, we’ve doing some of the biggest things we’ve done with this band, playing spaces like the London Forum it’s a dream come true for us. There’s a venue in Southampton – the Guildhall and we used to go to gigs there growing up and seeing that we’re main support in that venue we get to do all the theatrical stuff we dreamed of doing, it’s gonna be great.

We’re away a lot next year, putting out new music and having great new visual ideas already. It’s going a be a busy and hectic one! We take pride in our work and just try to work as hard as we can. It means a lot to us and we sacrifice everything to do it. We get things in place so we can just hit the ground with it in 2016.

In line with The Horror Issue, are you horror fans?

Will: Yeah! I mean in particular there’s a film called Phantom of the Paradise – i don’t know if you’d call it a horror film as such but it’s a play on Phantom of the Opera and there’s a great scene where the main character gets his head caught in a record press. It’s kind of Halloweeny I guess!

Sean: We went to the Pleasure Beach the other day and we had a moment that was like that scene from The Exorcist. Ian our guitarist is really into exorcism films and there’s a section of the Pasaje Del Terror where there’s a girl on the bed and you’re thinking – she’s gonna wake up in a minute and do something scary and then all of a sudden she does and chases you out of the room. So not only have we been watching those kinds of films with Halloween coming up, we kind of lived it a little bit too!

After continuing to chat about our horror icons and fancy dress, it was show time.

Daventry based Dead Frequency kicked things off with some classic punk rock, mixing their catchy original tracks with a little Green Day cover to warm up the crowd. Lead singer Matt threw himself into a high energy set and even got a mini circle pit of 6 people on the go.

Next up was local band Skeleton Frames. A mix of 90’s grunge and heavy guitars saw the indie rock band prove themselves popular with the night’s crowd. 

Lead singer Emily Isherwood will either enchant you with her introverted demeanour, or just annoy you for keeping her eyes shut and frequently sitting on the floor throughout their set. Their music though, can’t be faulted.

Creeper treated fans to songs old and new with tracks taken from recent release Callous Heart, right through to their first EP, including anthem The Honeymoon Suite and the beautifully theatrical Novena. After a pretty magical set, I’d urge anyone to join the Creeper Cult.